jill of all arts

monday

8:29pm
installing lightroom.  eating a banana.  got the serial number wrong the first time.  must include "eating bananas while inputting numbers" on my list of inappropriate multi-tasking.  maybe there's something to this ...

9:58pm
well, unitasking has certainly gone well the last hour and a half.  edited a whole folder of photos in lightroom.  of course, that's not really saying anything.  when i get in my photo editing zone, a posse of alien ninjas led by vin diesel could storm the study and i wouldn't notice.

tuesday

6:45am
ugh.  double ugh.  i effectively unitasked sleep last night, and i am now multi-tasking getting up and staring into space.  somehow i managed to roll the covers into a perfect cocoon since joel got up.  if i stayed in my cocoon another 3 hours, i would emerge a lovely, energetic butterfly.  as it is, i think i'm still in the melted caterpillar phase.

8:45am
i've set a timer.  will work on email and nothing but email until it beeps.

9:15am
score for unitasking.  processed entire inbox. (i was deleting emails from last year...)

9:27am
another entry for inappropriate multi-tasking: attempting to blow out a candle while brushing one's teeth.  enough said.

1:27pm
driving.  drinking a latte. talking on speakerphone. checking voicemail transcriptions.  but not listening to the radio or checking email!  maybe i should have been a little less specific at the outset. ok, no eating, drinking, phone-ing of any sort, putting on makeup, going through purse, or changing clothes while driving.  sigh.

4:30pm
practicing piano.  not allowed to get up for any reason.  not even to trim my fingernails, which are a half a millimeter past the point where i like them and are bugging me.  i keep my fingernails very short.  arg.

7:37pm
writing this blog.  did you know that multi-tasking wastes the united states 650 million dollars per year (according to the official statistical institute of random number generation, presumably)?

is it really still monday?  wow, it's been a long day!

i had an epiphany this week, reading a humor book by a.j. jacobs called, "the guinea pig diaries: my life as an experiment".  i'm withholding judgment on the book until i finish it (a.j. has a tendency to toe the line of propriety at times) so don't go out and buy it and blame me when it gets edgy.

anyhoo, his first experiment is called "the unitasker," which is only a little more awful than it sounds.  a whole nightmare-ish month with no multi-tasking.  no reading while eating, no listening to the radio in the shower, no (gulp) stalking facebook while working, no music during homework, no talking on the phone while cleaning/driving/emailing/you name it.
zip.
zilch.
nadda.
... hellish.

and then he starts spouting a bunch of statistics about multi-tasking: the human brain functions poorly while multi-tasking, multi-tasking shortcircuits the pathway from short-term memory to long-term memory, a whole flipping lot of studies have proved that multi-tasking makes us dumber, etc, etc, etc.

so, faced with an ever growing, barely shrinking pile of projects that, no matter how much time i spend on them, never seem to show progress, i'm taking the uni-tasking plunge.

let me rephrase that.  i'm gingerly toeing the uni-tasking puddle.  i will still listen to podcasts while cooking and read on my lunch break.  i will still play my "treadmill" playlist at the gym and brew coffee while helping customers at starbucks.  but, for one week, i will not listen to music, click on firefox, or tidy my desk while working on projects.  i will not listen to the radio or check my email while driving.  (don't look at me like that.  texting is illegal.  checking email is perfectly legal ... i think.)

i am writing this whole blog in one sitting, and i am not going to stand up until it's done.  not even to glance at the very loud cat fight right outside my window.  (i've allowed myself to nervously dart my eyes around the room as part of the detox, but that's it.)

my whole uni-tasking thing was going great until joel called me to the living room a couple minutes ago to show me the beautiful sunset.  failure.

maybe that kind of failure's ok, though.  i'll keep y'all updated. ;)